The Legend of Mononoke Hime

In 2006 I cosplayed for the very first time, as San from Princess Mononoke.

I was drawn to cosplaying San after watching the film for the second time. It remains one of my favourite films ever, and I still love the themes and characters in it. I had such a good time in this costume!

I did make the whole outfit, but I'm displaying the props by themselves because I just wanted to take some photos of them separate to the rest of the costume. (I intend to do a proper full-costume photoshoot at some point, but finding a suitable location is tricky! These were taken in my back garden, which isn't big or foresty enough!)

I've included the crystal dagger in this montage mainly because I put effort into making it and finding as accurate-looking a crystal as possible on eBay, even though I didn't wear it with the costume in the end. (Mainly because the crystal dagger is given to San by Ashitaka much later after the first mask she wears - the one I made, shown here - gets destroyed at Irontown.)

I have an in-progress shot of the mask being made in my scraps, and I might get around to making a step-by-step montage with more in-progress shots at some point (I took quite a few!).